I like the analogy but which 2 is AI coding?
Fast & Cheap (but not Good?) - I wouldn't really say that AI coding is "cheap"
Cheap & Good (but not Fast) - Again, not really "cheap"
Fast & Good (but not Cheap) - This seems like maybe where we're at? Is this a bad place?
It's hitting all three, right _now_.
Eventually, it will be just Fast and Good. It won't be cheap, as companies start moving towards profitability.
Remember when Uber was super cheap? I do. They're fast and good though.
The proper idiom is "You can only pick two". It doesn't say that everything is two of them, or even one.
It's not cheap or good, it's just fast.
It's fast. It's cheap compared to employees. It's really the latter that people are upset about.
As for good. Well, how much software is really good? A lot of it is sewn together APIs and electron-like runtimes and 5,000 dependencies someone else wrote. Not exactly hand-crafted and artisanal.
I'm sure everyone here's projects are the exception, but engineering is always about meeting the design requirements. Either it does or it doesn't.